Doing meetings better

You get into a meeting with the CEO, all pumped up. The meeting is about a project you’ve been working very hard on. You feel you’ve got all your bases covered, are ready to answer any questions. You’ve got a good feeling about this. The project has been going well.

You start the presentation. Goes ok for a bit. He asks a few questions- you feel you answered well. Then things suddenly turn. He gets distracted – starts looking at his phone. Or starts asking questions that are baffling – didn’t we discuss this last week with him? Does he even understand what we’re talking about? Why is he getting ahead of the presentation? Why is he jumping all over the place?

After a while, he might even stop the meeting mid-way, and comment that you’re not ready for the discussion. Maybe the CEO shows more patience, but the meeting doesn’t end up on a high – you don’t get any appreciation, and the decisions you were hoping for don’t get taken.

You’re shell-shocked, and leave the meeting completely dazed. You have no idea what happened just now. The meeting was a disaster.

Does this sound familiar? Then read on, for my learnings on how to do executive meetings well. If you've not seen this story play out, do read through anyway, and would love your thoughts on my suggestions below.

(PS: This is true for a meeting with any manager who has a variety of teams reporting into her, not just the CEO. So think senior leader when you read CEO in this article.)

So, what happened in this meeting?

You lost control of the narrative and the meeting. You allowed him to feel you were not in control. He was not sure what was happening, so he took control of the meeting. And that often ends up in a disaster, because he doesn’t know enough about the topic – you’re the expert on your project, he’s not.

Senior executives have very low attention spans, and have a very large number of things they are involved in. They are switching contexts very rapidly, from one meeting to the next.

Hence they need stuff to be crisp, clear, and in context. Else their attention will wander.

I’ve been on both sides of such meetings and have spent time thinking about why they go wrong.

One reason is that the project team is deep into the project: but they don’t realise that the CEO is not. Another reason is that the team’s presentation focusses on what new stuff they have discovered or done – not on answering the core questions the CEO cares about.

My solution for better review meetings, is very simple: All that we need to do is ask and answer five questions in the meeting. This has generally worked well for me. (Not always, to be honest- there's a lot more that can go wrong besides this :-) Here they are:

Where (are we?)

Start by setting the context. Let me repeat. Start by setting the context.

You absolutely must begin by setting the context. Doesn’t matter when the last meeting was. Doesn’t matter how obvious things seem to you. Doesn’t matter how involved this executive has been in this project. Assume he remembers nothing.

Start. By. Setting. Context.

(Why are we meeting today, and what has happened so far?)

Recap previous discussions and decisions, and follow up action items. Talk about what we hope to achieve by the end of this meeting. These two are absolutely critical to do. I’ve seen meetings go south because the leader is confused about the meeting, or has a different agenda in mind than what you’ve come prepared for.

Where (are we going?)

What’s the goal of the project? What are we trying to achieve? Best if there is one metric you can mention, with the initial state, current state and target state. If one is not possible, keep it limited to 2-3. Any more than that, then it probably means that the project’s goal itself is not clear.

Place this goal/metric in a big picture context. Always start with the big picture. For instance, the specific project under discussion in this meeting could be about reducing your server hosting costs. Rather than mentioning just the target reduction, start at the overall cost structure, and the impact this project will have on the overall P&L. (If you don't have access to the overall P&L, maybe start at overall tech costs). This tells the leader why he should care about what's going to follow.

You might not even need to talk about it – just put it on a slide, and give everyone a minute to read it.

Why (are we going there?)

This step could be optional, depending on the context of the discussion. But be ready to cover this, because it could come up. Some questions to answer in this section:

• Why is this a good place to go? Include any tradeoffs. Be ready with supporting data, field research, user interviews etc.
• Why are we targeting only this much? Why not more?

When (will we get there?)

What are the key milestones for the project? When are we likely to hit the target metrics? Are we delayed? If yes, can we do anything to get back on track?

How (will we get there?)

Optional. Needed only if the leader wants to get into it. They well might want to. In this section, it will also be good to show a project plan, with key activities and dates. That gives them comfort and confidence that the team has thought things through.

If we reach this far, we’re pretty much done. Now, we just need to close the meeting out, with this closing question:

What help do we need?

This is the core objective of the meeting. What do you need from the leader? Only an approval to go ahead? Or resource commitments? Help with aligning other teams? Be very specific here.

One last point:

The core content for all these sections should be very crisp. If you’re creating slides, you want the core deck to be not more than 10 slides. Even that might be a few too many. And the slides should have limited text. (Be ready with detailed deep-dives separately, if needed, as an appendix.)

If 10 slides are not enough to tell your story, then you probably don’t have sufficient clarity about the project. Forcing yourself to 10 slides forces you to think about how to tell your story.

What I've seen is that the value of these simple steps goes beyond the meeting itself. Teams often see significant improvement in their understanding of, and in the execution of the project itself! The value of structured review meetings is often in the preparation for the meeting - not the meeting itself!